Lane-deviation penalty formulation and analysis for autonomous vehicle avoidance maneuvers

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles hold promise for increased vehicle and traffic safety, and there are several developments in the field where one example is an avoidance maneuver. There it is dangerous for the vehicle to be in the opposing lane, but it is safe to drive in the original lane again after the obstacle. To capture this basic observation, a lane-deviation penalty (LDP) objective function is devised. Based on this objective function, a formulation is developed utilizing optimal all-wheel braking and steering at the limit of road–tire friction. This method is evaluated for a double lane-change scenario by computing the resulting behavior for several interesting cases, where parameters of the emergency situation such as the initial speed of the vehicle and the size and placement of the obstacle are varied, and it performs well. A comparison with maneuvers obtained by minimum-time and other lateral-penalty objective functions shows that the use of the considered penalty function decreases the time that the vehicle spends in the opposing lane.